Bringing yoga off your mat into your life, one pose at a time.

The Practice of Perspective

Time does more than tick mindlessly, measuring out moments and rationing minutes. It heals too.

I remember as a teenager being embroiled in a heartbreaking social tangle. I sat at my childhood kitchen table lamenting the situation with tears welling in my eyes. My mother reassured me saying, “I can tell you that in a few years this will mean nothing.”

She was right. All I can remember from that moment is my mother’s words. I have no idea what actually caused the tears.

Now my daily life hustles across a grid marked by time. School drop off at 8:30, work by 9:00, 60 minutes for lunch, pick up by 4:45, swim class by 6, my eyes search out the dashboard clock as my own digital sherpa.

I rarely notice how this endless current of time is slowly softening edges and smoothing rough spots. If I choose to stop and think about what might have had my stomach in a knot last year at this time, it becomes really clear that things have changed and that particular worry has dissipated on its own.

It causes a reevaluation of current worries. If they don’t matter a year from now, do they matter at all?

Even time, that is often viewed as a taskmaster, can be re-framed as a gentler force, kind enough to ease fears and tensions just by keeping its constant measured pace.